The Kar-Chee Reign by Avram Davidson Page B

was cold and the stars were just beginning to pale when Liam, Rickar, an older Knower named Lej who was the uncle of Fateem, and the raftsman Skai descended into the small craft, hoisted a small triangular sail, and let the wind take them in. Day crept out, the sun leaped up, something moved upon the beach, and presently they saw it dissolve into three things … three men. Warily they checked their weapons. The three men were soon seen to be three very young men, two of them evidently brothers. Surprise and suspicion jousted for place on their faces; Liam felt he knew exactly how they must feel.
    Lej was the first to speak. “War is not our wish,” he said. He took a tiny pouch of flour, emptied it into his hand, tossed it north … south … east … west. “Peace and plenty to the four quarters of your land. May the blessings of Nature be made manifest upon them and upon you and upon yours.”
    The three young men looked uncertain, perhaps regretting a ritual of welcome which they didn’t have. Then, after exchanging glances, they stowed their bows and stepped into the water and helped beach the canoe. The older brother said, “All men are welcome here now, I think….”
    They looked around them with something close to fright, and they lifted their heads and sniffed the air. Some of the near-fear seemed to ebb. And the younger brother said, “There are dragons hereabouts….”

V
    R EN R OWAN now seemed old enough to be the father of the man he had been but a few days before. The homesite already had a slovenly and half-abandoned air to it. He gazed at the newcomers blankly at first, squinted and gaped at his sons, frowned as he observed the signs of decay quickening about his yard and house. Then he said, after several starts and stops and with idiot soundings and smackings of tongue and palate and throat, “So…. Came here to die…. Could have died at home….” Then he looked at them with the dull, sick look with which a man painfully and irrevocably ill may reproach those who do not share his pain.
    Lej’s answer was brisk. “Everyone has to die, but no one has to die just yet. This man here, he with the strange eyes, he and men and women from his country, were found by us at sea on a raft. They had despaired to do other than die, but they are, as you may see, alive and well nonetheless.”
    Liam listened with wry appreciation, noting how Lej said nothing of the raft people who were
not
now “alive and well nonetheless.” He noted with some surprise that this seemed to be a different Lej. Aboard the ark he had apparently been in some sort of suspended animation, with nothing to do except perform his duties and listen to old Father Gaspar. Now the mantle of Gaspar, the principal knower, seemed to have devolved upon him by proxy and by right of senior age. This was not now the obedient subordinate speaking; it was the true believer, preaching to the ignorant.
    “Needn’t die just yet….” Old Ren repeated the words. A very faint flicker passed over his face. It was not hope — not yet — it may have been only disagreement. But it indicated the return of some emotion other than lethargy and absolute resignation. Lors looked from Lej, smooth, utterly confident, to his father, so suddenly and prematurely bereft of hope and strength and even manhood. He did not know what Lej was about to say, but he felt at that moment that if it would restore his father to the man he had been, then, whatever it was, he, Lors, would follow and obey.
    “There can be no right action without right knowledge,” Lej went on. “I see this house building, these outbuildings, these fields and groves and cattle and stock; and I observe that they do not pertain to savages nor to barbarians, nor to men who live like brutals with no inkling of the social complex. I see here a settlement of civilized people, of people who possess knowledge and the ability to know more.”
    He paused to let this sink in, and turned his head to look